I Am the Messenger (23 page)

About Sophie. The barefoot girl with—

Audrey’s asleep.

She’s asleep, but I go on speaking. I tell her about Edgar Street and all the others. The stones. The beatings. Father O’Reilly. Angie Carusso. The Rose boys. The Tatupu family.

Just for now, I find I’m happy, and I want to stay awake, but soon the night falls down, beating me hard into sleep.

The yawn of a girl can be so beautiful it makes you cringe.

Especially when she’s standing in your kitchen in her underpants and a shirt, yawning.

Audrey’s doing this right now as I do the dishes. I rinse a plate and there she is, rubbing her eyes, yawning, then smiling.

“Sleep okay?” I ask.

She nods and says, “You’re comfortable, Ed.”

I realize I could take that comment badly, but it’s a compliment.

“Have a seat,” I say, and without thinking, I look at her shirt buttons and her hips. I follow her legs down to her knees, shins, and ankles. All in a brief second. Audrey’s feet look soft and delicate. Almost like they could melt into the kitchen floor.

I make her some cereal and she crunches it. I didn’t have to ask if she wanted some. Some things I know.

This is confirmed later, once Audrey’s had a shower and dressed fully.

At the front door, she says, “Thanks, Ed.” She pauses before speaking again. “You know, out of everyone, you know me the best, and you treat me the best. I feel most comfortable with you.” She even leans close and kisses me on the cheek. “Thanks for putting up with me.”

As she walks away, I still feel her lips on my skin. The taste of them.

I watch her all the way up the street, till she turns the corner. Just before she does, she knows I’m standing there, and she turns one last moment and waves. In answer, I hold up my hand, and she’s gone.

Slowly.

At times painfully.

Audrey is killing me.

And do me a favor, will you? Cut down on the chips, for Christ’s sake.

I hear the words of my friend from last night again.

All day they come back at me, along with the other statement he made.

You might not be the only one getting aces in the mail. Did you ever think of that?

Of course, there was a question mark at the end of his words, but I know it was a statement. It makes me think about all the people I’ve run into. What if they’re
all
messengers, like me, and they’re all threatened and desperate just to get through what they have to do to survive? I wonder if they, too, have received playing cards and firearms in their letter boxes or if they’ve had their own specific tools provided.
It would all be personal,
I think.
I got cards because that’s what I do. Maybe Daryl and Keith were given the balaclavas, and my mate from last night was given his black outfit and his cantankerous demeanor.

By quarter to eight I’ll be back at Melusso’s, minus the Doorman. This time I’m going in. I have to explain it to him before I go.

He looks at me.

What?
he asks.
No chips tonight?

“Sorry, mate. I’ll bring you back something, I promise.”

He seems happy enough by the time I leave because I’ve fixed him a coffee and thrown some ice cream in it as well. He almost jumps from paw to paw as I’m putting it down for him.

Nice,
he tells me in the kitchen. We’re still friends.

I must admit, I even miss him a little as I walk to Clown Street and Melusso’s. It feels like we were in this one together, and now I have to finish it alone and take all the glory.

That is.

If there
is
glory.

I’ve almost forgotten that things can go wrong and be difficult. Exhibit A for that was Edgar Street. Exhibit B, the Rose boys.

Now I wonder what I’ll deliver this time round as I walk through the door of Melusso’s restaurant into the all-consuming smell and warmth of spaghetti sauce, pasta, and garlic. I’ve kept my eyes open for anyone following me, but I haven’t seen a soul who looks interested. There are just people going about what they always do.

Talking. Parking crooked.

Swearing. Telling their kids to hurry up and stop fighting.

All that kind of thing.

Now, in the restaurant, I ask the plump waitress to put me in the darkest corner.

“Over there?” she asks in amazement. “Near the kitchen?”

“Yes please.”

“No one’s ever asked to be seated there,” she claims. “You sure, mate?”

“Positive.”

What a strange fellow,
I see her think, but she takes me over.

“Wine list?”

“Sorry?”

“Would you like some wine?”

“No, thanks.”

She lashes the wine list from the table and tells me the specials. I order spaghetti and meatballs and lasagna.

“You expecting someone?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“So you’re going to eat
both
?”

“Oh, no,” I answer. “The lasagna’s for my dog—I promised to bring him home something.”

This time she gives me a look that says,
What a poor, pathetic, lonely bastard,
which is understandable, I suppose. But she says, “I’ll bring you that just before you go, okay?”

“Thanks.”

“Any drinks?”

“No, thanks.”

I refuse all drinks at restaurants because I figure I can buy a drink anywhere—it’s the food I can’t cook that I’m here for.

She leaves and I survey the restaurant, which is half full. There are people gorging themselves, others sipping wine, while a young couple kiss over the table and share their food. The only person of interest is a man on the same side of the restaurant as me. He’s waiting for someone, drinking wine but not eating. He wears a suit and has wavy combed-back hair, black and silver.

Soon after I get the meatballs and spaghetti, the night’s significance comes to fruition.

I nearly choke on my fork when the man’s guest arrives. He stands up and kisses her and puts his hands on her hips.

The woman is Beverly Anne Kennedy.

Bev Kennedy.

Otherwise known as Ma.

Oh, bloody hell,
I think, and I keep my head down.

For some reason, I feel like I’m going to throw up.

My mother’s wearing a flattering dress. It’s a shiny dark blue. Almost the color of a storm. She sits down politely, and her hair actually flanks her face very nicely.

In short, it’s the first time she’s ever looked like a woman to me. Usually she just looks like foulmouthed Ma, who swears at me and calls me useless. Tonight, though, she wears earrings, and her dark face and brown eyes smile. She wrinkles a bit when she smiles, but, yes, she looks happy.

She looks happy being a woman.

The man is very much the gentleman, pouring her some wine and asking what she’d like to eat. They talk with pleasure and ease, but I can’t hear what they say. To be honest, I try not to.

I think of my father.

I think of him, and immediately it depresses me.

Don’t ask me why, but I feel like he deserved more than this. He was, of course, a drunk, especially at the end of his life, but he was so kind, and generous, and gentle. Looking into my meatballs, I see his short black hair and his nearly colorless eyes. He was quite tall, and when he left for work, he always wore a flannel shirt and had a cigarette in his mouth. At home, he never smoked. Not in the house. He, too, was a gentleman, despite everything else.

I also remember him staggering through the front door and lurching for the couch after closing at the pub.

Ma screamed at him, of course, but it lost effect.

She nagged him all the time, anyway. He’d work his guts out, but it was never enough. Remember the coffee table incident? Well, my father had to put up with that every day.

When we were younger, he used to take us kids places, like the national park and the beach and a playground miles away that had a huge metal rocket ship. Not like the plastic vomit playgrounds the poor kids have to play on these days. He’d take us to those places and quietly watch us play. We’d look back and he’d be sitting there, happily smoking, maybe dreaming. My first memory is of being four years old and getting a piggyback from Gregor Kennedy, my father. That was when the world wasn’t so big and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero and not a human.

Now I sit here, asking myself what I have to do next.

My first order of business is to not finish the meatballs. I only watch Ma on her wonderful date. It’s quite obvious that the two of them have been here before. The waitress knows them and stops for a brief exchange of words. They’re very comfortable.

I try to be bitter about it, and angry, but I catch myself. What’s the point? She is, after all, a person, and she deserves the right to be happy just like everyone else.

It’s only soon after that I understand exactly why my first instinct is to begrudge her this happiness.

It’s nothing to do with my father.

It’s me.

In a sudden wave of nausea, I see the absolute horror, if you will, of this situation.

There’s my ma, fifty-odd years old, hightailing around town with some guy while I sit here, in the prime of my youth, completely and utterly alone.

I shake my head.

At myself.

The waitress takes away my meatballs and brings out the Doorman’s lasagna in a cheap plastic box. He’ll be very happy with that, I expect.

As I slip to the counter and pay, I look back at Ma and the man, cautious not to be seen, but she’s totally engrossed in him. She stares and listens with such intent that I don’t even bother trying to hide myself from view anymore. I pay up and get out of there, except I don’t go home. I walk to Ma’s place and wait on the front porch.

It smells like my childhood, this house. I can even smell it from under the door as I sit here on the cool cement.

The night is alive with stars, and when I lie down and look up, I get lost up there. I feel like I’m falling, but upward, into the abyss of sky above me.

The next thing I feel is someone’s foot nudging my leg.

I wake up and find the face that belongs to it.

“What are
you
doing here?” she says.

That’s Ma.

Friendly as ever.

I rise to an elbow and decide not to dance around this. “I came to ask if you had a nice time at Melusso’s.”

An expression of surprise falls from her face, though she’s trying to keep it. It breaks off and she seems to catch it and fidget with it in her hands. “It was very nice,” she says, but I can tell she’s stalling to go through her options. “A woman has to live.”

I sit up now. “I guess that’s fair.”

She shrugs. “That the only reason you’re here—to grill me about going out to dinner with a man? I have needs, you know.”

Needs.

Have a listen to her.

She steps past me toward the door and inserts the key. “Now if you don’t mind, Ed, I’m very tired.”

Now.

The moment.

I nearly give in, but tonight I stand up. I know full well that out of all of her offspring, I’m the only one this woman won’t invite into the house in this situation. If my sisters were here, she’d already be making coffee. If it was Tommy, she’d be asking him how university’s treating him, offering him a Coke or a piece of cake.

Yet, with me, Ed Kennedy, every bit as much one of her kids as the others, she steps past and refuses friendliness, let alone an invitation to come in. Just once, I’d like her to be even the slightest bit affable.

The door’s nearly shut when I stop it with my hand. The sound of a slapped face.

Her expression swells as I look at her.

I speak, saying the words hard.

“Ma?” I ask.

“What?”

“Why do you hate me so much?”

And now she looks at me, this woman, as I make sure my eyes don’t give me away.

Flatly, simply, she answers.

“Because, Ed—you remind me of
him
.”

Him?

It registers.

Him—my father.

She goes inside and the door slams.

I’ve had to take a man up to the Cathedral and attempt to kill him. I’ve had hit men eat pies in my kitchen and lay me out. I’ve been jumped by a group of teenage thugs.

This, however, feels like my darkest hour.

Standing.

Hurting.

On my mother’s front porch.

The sky opens now, crumbling apart.

I want to hammer the door with my hands and my feet.

I don’t.

All I do is sink to my knees, felled by the words that could deliver such a knockout blow. I try to make something good of it because I loved my father. Apart from the alcoholic section, I think it can’t be totally shameful to be like him.

So why does this feel so awful?

I don’t move.

In fact, I vow not to leave this shitty front porch until I get the answers I deserve. I’ll sleep here if I have to and wait in the scorching heat all day tomorrow. I stand back up and call out.

“I’m not leaving, Ma!” Again. “You hear me? I’m not leaving.”

After fifteen minutes the door pulls open again, but I don’t look at her. I turn around and speak to the road, saying, “You treat everyone else so good—Leigh, Kath, and Tommy. It’s like…” I can’t allow myself to weaken. I pace. “But you speak to me with complete disrespect, and I’m the one who’s
here
.” Now I turn and look at her. “I’m the one who’s here if you need something—and each time, I do it, don’t I?”

She agrees. “Yes, Ed,” but she also pounces. She assaults me with her own version of the truth. The words cut me through the ears so hard that I expect blood to ooze from them. “Yes, you’re here—and that’s exactly it!” She holds her arms out. “Look at this dump. The house, the town, everything.” The voice is dark. “And your father—he promised me that one day we’d leave this place. He said we’d just pack up and go, and look where we are, Ed. We’re still here. I’m here.
You’re
here, and just like your old man, you’re all promise, Ed, and no results. You”—she points at me with venom—“you could be as good as any of them. As good as Tommy, even…. But you’re still here and you’ll still be herein fifty years.” She sounds so cold. “And you’ll have achieved nothing.”

Fade to silence.

“I just want you”—she breaks it—“to make something of yourself.” Slowly she makes her way to the front steps and says, “You have to realize something, Ed.”

“What?”

Carefully now, her statement comes out. “Believe it or not—it takes a lot of love to hate you like this.”

I try to understand.

She’s still on the porch when I go down to the front lawn and turn back.

God, it’s dark now.

As dark as the Ace of Spades.

“Were you seeing that man when Dad was still alive?” I ask her.

She looks at me, wishing she didn’t have to, and although she says nothing, I know. I know it’s not only my father she hates, but herself. That’s when I realize she’s got it wrong.

It’s not the place,
I think.
It’s the people
.

We’d have all been the same anywhere else.

I speak again. One last question.

“Did Dad know?”

Long pause.

A pause that murders, until my mother turns away and cries, and the night is so deep and dark that I wonder if the sun will ever come up.